


Wasteful

by northerntrash



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Pointless fluff, and you should probably just tell people when you are interested in them, coffee shop AU, in which staring awkwardly does not make for good flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-14
Updated: 2014-06-14
Packaged: 2018-02-04 14:06:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1781791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/northerntrash/pseuds/northerntrash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bilbo just didn't understand; why would anyone come in every day, order cake, and then not eat it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wasteful

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this](http://iwannakissallama.tumblr.com/post/86268131930/i-really-need-to-draw-a-bubbleline-au-where-pb) beautiful work on tumblr (I think it was the 'I hate everyone look' line that really made me think of these two)
> 
> Because apparently I just don't want to ever leave the comforting embrace of the coffee shop AU. And I needed to write something fluffy to make myself feel better. Hope you all enjoy. :) 
> 
> As always, come hit me up on [tumblr](http://northerntrash.tumblr.com) if you want to chat!

Bilbo glanced up at the clock behind the counter, and right on track the bell above the door rang; he didn’t look up, but he didn’t stop himself smiling down at the cake that he was carefully slicing.

The man came in every day at half past five, on the dot.

It was always the same, without change, and Bilbo probably shouldn’t have noticed it; the bakery-cum-café was a busy spot throughout the day, and they had many customers who returned regularly throughout the week for a slice of cake or one of their deli sandwiches. He wasn’t a talkative customer, unlike some (in fact Bilbo was pretty sure that he had never exchanged more than the same handful of words when he served him) and he didn’t do anything that would have made him stand out.

In fact, the opposite was the case: the man arrived, ordered, sat in silence, and then left again. Sometimes he read a paper, or got out his laptop, but most of the time he just stared across the café, as if he was switching off for a while at the end of a long day.

At least, that was how Bilbo had always interpreted the man – he always came in a suit, around the time that most work places would be finishing up for the day, and there was something heavy about the line of his shoulders that suggested that he was stressed about something. There were a lot of office buildings around the place, and they had more than their share of stressed execs and tired looking office workers, so it really wasn’t that unfathomable that he would be one of the same; if he had fallen asleep over his coffee, it wouldn’t have even been the first time as customer did, although he always managed to stay awake.

But still, he stuck out, and not just to Bilbo.

“He’s back again,” one colleague noted as he took he normal seat near the back. “The cake guy.”

Bilbo nodded, sliding out from behind the counter, to take his order.

He always went over, whenever he could, and the others had cottoned on to how much the oddity of the man’s visits annoyed him, and let him.

It was Bilbo’s mystery, and it bothered no one else like it did him.

Though he was entirely unwilling to admit it to anyone else, it was more than just the mystery that made him pay attention to this particular customer, more than just the unanswered question that many of them ended up debating on their breaks. Closer to the man, and you could better appreciate the firm contour of his mouth, the striking intensity of his gaze, the fact that the well cut lines of his suit did little to hide his firm and solid build; Bilbo really tried not to stare, of course, but there was a certain amount of _looking_ necessary when you took a man’s order, and eye contact was a friendly and necessary part of customer service.

That’s what he told himself anyway, as he made his way over to the man, weaving through the small tables over to the man’s. His dark hair was streaked with silver, and it wasn’t just Bilbo that found the sight of it so appealing; he’d heard several of his colleagues comment on it in whispers whenever he came in (and not just the female ones).

He didn’t smile much, that was true, but he was striking enough even with a glower, although Bilbo had found himself wondering on more than one occasion as he propped himself up on the counter during a slow shift how the man would look with a smile on his face. That thought normally lead him zoning out somewhat, though, so he tried as hard as he could to avoid thinking about him anymore than he could.

But still, that wasn’t entirely why Bilbo remembered him; they had several impressively attractive customers after all, and none of them had quite stuck in his mind like this one had.

He reached the table, and Bilbo offered him a smile: if it was perhaps a little more reserved than the smiles that customers usually received, then that was no one’s business but his own.

That might seem a little surprising, given his (admittedly still kept secret) attraction for the man, but Bilbo had his reasons for his distance.

And mostly, that was to do with his order.

The man nodded back, and Bilbo pulled the pencil from behind his ear, the flick of his wayward curls in their usual unruly flop, flicking open the pad as if he were going to make a note of what the man wanted.

He hadn’t actually bothered to write down the order in months.

“The usual?” he asked.

The man offered him a slight quirk of his mouth, something that did not quite constitute a smile but couldn’t quite be describes as anything else, and another nod in return. The man leant back in his chair, loosening the knot of his tie, and Bilbo turned back to the counter to avoid his eyes following the slow movement of the man’s throat as he swallowed, the faint dark line of chest hair just visible as he undid the top couple of buttons on his shirt.

God, some things should not be allowed.  

The order was always the same, and that in itself was fine; it wasn’t a difficult or complicated one, and many people always ordered the same thing. There was the twinkling-eyed old man who always ordered the same sandwich and cappuccino; the glaring blonde woman who only ever had a hazelnut latte and a macaroon; the young, messy-haired student that came for a chamomile tea and a tuna melt.

The man always wanted a coffee, served black but with a small jug of cream on the side. Sometimes he used a little, sometimes a lot: it seemed to depend on how tired he was, and it was as if he did not trust anyone to cut his caffeine but himself.

The coffee was fine.

The coffee was normal.

It was the cake that was the problem.

He made the coffee, poured the cream, and placed the slice of cake on one of the delicate plates embossed with the bakery’s symbol; it all went on the tray, and then back over to the table. The man barely seemed to notice his return, staring across the café as if he had entirely switched off. Bilbo glanced up at him as he moved the order from the tray to the table, taking note of the dark circles under his eyes, the hollows of his cheekbones looking even more stark in the overhead lighting. He idly wondered how those dark contours and smudges might look in gentler lighting – perhaps the soft lamplight of his own living room, or gentle candlelight across a dinner table.

But that was quite enough of that, he thought to himself as he tucked the tray under his arm, offering the man another small, half-smile.

“Long day?” he asked, as he did every afternoon, and the man nodded.

“Long enough,” he responded, one of the common answers he gave, glancing briefly up at Bilbo.

He had to resist the urge to ask the man if everything really _was_ okay (that was a pretty regular urge, as well, unfortunately). He’d looked more and more tired recently, as if he’d been working too hard, or there was a lot on his mind. But it wasn’t Bilbo’s place to ask, and it wasn’t his business, so he didn’t.

The man always stayed for about forty five minutes, very rarely more or less.

Bilbo didn’t look at him, or even over to the table, until the man stood to leave.

“Has he done it again?” his colleague asked, as Bilbo made a move towards the table that the man had just vacated.

The coffee cup was empty, the creamer half-gone – the day must not have been too bad, then.

And there was the plate.

And the slice of strawberry cake.

The one that he always asked for, every time he came in, without fail.

Still there, untouched.

He never ate it. He always ordered it, and never ate it.

_Every single freaking day._

And you see, it shouldn’t have bothered him that much, he knew that: he shouldn’t have taken it so personally, but it annoyed him to see food wasted, even more so when it had been him that made the food in the first place. The bakery was famous for its cakes, and the strawberry one was his own personal recipe- he came in to work in the early morning to make them, and it was rewarding: everyone always loved them, complimented them, he watched the way that people smiled as they took their first bite, and it gave him a great deal of satisfaction to know that there was this one small thing he could do to make a person’s day just a little better with a swirl of icing, a pinch of cinnamon, a piece of fruit.

And then this man, this _incomprehensible_ man, had the gall to order his cake and never eat it.

It smarted.

It made no sense whatsoever – why go to all the effort of ordering and paying for cake every day if you never bothered to _eat it?_ Once or twice might make sense, but over and over again?

He sided away, and his colleague rolled his eyes at him at the sight of the plate.

“I just don’t understand,” Bilbo said as he tipped the cake away in the bin – _so wasteful, so annoying_ – “Why do it, every day?”

His friend shrugged. “Not every day, but it is strange.”

“So he doesn’t come in on weekends often,” Bilbo acquiesced, “but still.”

“Or Thursdays, he never appears then, either.”

Bilbo shrugged. He wouldn’t know.

He didn’t work on Thursdays.

It would have perhaps been less irritating if everyone else who worked there hadn’t picked up on the strangeness of it. Someone had dubbed him as ‘the cake guy’ and that name had stuck unquestioningly – if you mentioned him by that particular epithet everyone immediately knew who you were discussing, without any further explanation. The fame of him had grown to the extent that even certain regulars now knew of him and this weird oddity, having overheard the servers gossiping: quite a few people gave him the side-eye as he came in, all of them wondering. Bilbo was just one more curious person among them all.

Of course, several customers had commented when he had been overheard wondering, he could always just _ask_.

That would at least solve the mystery he supposed, but the idea of doing so was mortifying.

_“Excuse me, I was just wondering, why do you order the cake when you don’t eat it?”_

_“Is it like a diet thing, tempting yourself to test your self-will?”_

_“Are you actually trying to offend me or do you just not know how weird you are being?”_

Things are made distinctly worse by the undeniable attraction that Bilbo feels for the man, because there is nothing that will increase your embarrassment like a crush, regardless of how old you are and how inappropriate the term ‘crush’ itself starts to become. And it has a become a little bit of a problem; he manages not to trip over his words or blush when he speaks to the man, but he has found himself daydreaming more times than is probably strictly appropriate or normal for a man his age.

He got close, one day, when he was tidying away another table and just happened to glance over to see the man steal the strawberry from the top of the cake – nothing else, but it is more than he has ever done before, and before he could help himself he was looking up at the man’s face, searching for a reaction.

The man had been looking in his direction, and caught sight of the glance, and his eyes had flickered with something brief but intimate; Bilbo had even opened his mouth to just _ask._

But then he had hesitated, because he couldn’t quite tell which of the questions would end up coming out of his mouth, and he was not entirely sure if he would not end up being incredibly rude by accident, and it was not exactly like Bilbo and the man knew each other – they were not friends, they were _barely_ acquaintances. Hell, the man probably didn’t even realise that Bilbo always served him when he came in. He was very much aware that most people barely looked at their servers, and wouldn’t even recognize them in the street outside of their restaurant and aprons, outside of a context in which they saw them on a daily basis.

Sometimes he lies in bed and thinks about how he could pose the question, if there was a good way to do it, in case that intimate moment ever happened again, though that is a habit that he has never admitted to anyone; it sounds a little strange, and obsessive, to be thinking about the customer long after work is over and he has returned to the comfort of his own home.

And the people he works with already think he is a little strange for being so bothered by it.

“Just ask,” Prim prompts, “what is he going to do?”

“ _You_ ask,” he retorts, and she rolls her eyes affectionately at him.

“It’s not me that wants to know so badly,” she replies with exasperating honesty.

“Liar,” he retorts, but it is a weak response and they both know it. She just goes back to making sandwiches, and leaves him to brood.

There are days when he almost feels like he will ask; days when he’s a bit tired or annoyed or he didn’t sleep well, and delivering that plate of cake makes a courage spark in him, that makes him think that maybe he could just demand an answer. Of course, demand is probably not the right word – he’d be polite, he wouldn’t not accusatory: he just wants to _know._

But at the last moment something always happens to stop him.

Sometimes there is an unexpected rush, tables filling up without any warning, and he doesn’t have time around orders and clearing up; other times he happens to be in the back when he arrives and another colleague takes his order instead. More often than not, though, it was simply the man’s glare that halted his nerve, the unambiguously furious look of a man that had had quite enough of the world for one day, an exhausted and angry expression as if he carried more weight than any man quite should. It was the kind of expression of a man who spent most of his day with people doing exactly what he told them to, a commanding look.

But more than that, it was damn well intimidating, as a stare, one that left Bilbo with no doubt that the man would not appreciate some discourteous waiter demanding to know why he chose not to eat his cake.

 After all, it shouldn’t have been any of his business.

And then the day came where he actually planned to do so.

He had just changed the recipe on the strawberry cake slightly: not by much, but enough that several customers had commented on it. The normal cream he’d switched out for vanilla, making the whole thing richer and sweeter; he’d mixed powdered freeze-dried strawberries in with the flour for additional flavour and colour. It looked prettier, and he’d changed the fluting on the icing too, to make it look a little more delicate, more European. He was proud of it. And he really, _really_ wanted the strange man to notice (he’d long since given up on trying to explain to his friends why he wanted the man’s attention so dearly, as he could barely himself understand this need for acceptance and praise from a stranger).

The man had come in the day before, and Bilbo had even _seen_ him poke at the slice when he’d noticed the pink tinge to the sponge, looking at the changes a little suspiciously, as if perhaps Bilbo was trying to trick him with some other cake.

Not that it should have mattered what cake he was given, because he still hadn’t eaten the damn thing.

It was unspeakably frustrating. 

_Why wouldn’t he just try it?_

And so Bilbo had been prepared to ask, finally: only the man had not come in again the next day.

To be honest he probably still would have been wired up enough to ask the following afternoon, but for the first time since he had first appeared several months ago, the man had not come in alone.

This was an unprecedented change, and set those who worked at the bakery-cum-café gossiping, a wave of interest spreading across them and the few customers who had become aware of the peculiarity of ‘the cake guy’, eyes darting over to the usual table (most with subtlety, a few with none whatsoever).

And Bilbo felt his heart sink.

Because hanging off one arm was a grinning, blonde haired boy, and sitting in the crook of his other arm was a second, younger child, his hair perhaps what the man’s might have looked like before it had been threaded with silver. The man didn’t look immediately any less irritated than usual, but on closer inspection there was something soft about the way the corner of his eyes creased when he looked at them, something gentle about the way he deposited first one boy then the other in chairs on his usual, lonely table, one on either side of him.

The younger boy, who looked perhaps only four or five years old, immediately slipped from his chair, darting through the tables to the cake counter, staring through the glass with his eyes wide at the array of cakes there.

Prim gave the boy a smile as the man called out to him.

“Kili, come sit down.”

Bilbo wasn’t sure if it was his father or Prim that made the boy blush a little and dart back to his chair, with that superhuman speed that only small children who are under your charge manage to achieve. But either way he found his eyes following the bright-eyed boy back to the table, a small frown creasing unintentionally across his forehead.

Prim watched him go, pulling a face.

 _That’s funny_ , Bilbo thought absently as he pulled his pencil from behind his ear. He hadn’t really any cause to feel disappointed that the man was obviously taken – after all, they’d never exchanged more than the same few words before now, and he’d done nothing to make Bilbo think that he might have had any interest in turn. They were nothing more than an irritated waiter and a customer with a strange peculiarity about cake.

He had no right to care one way or the other.

 _But I do,_ he frowned to himself. _I do._

He went over to the table, smiling absently at the young boys as they beamed up at him, the enthusiasm on their faces evident. He could see the family resemblance, now he was closer: the line of the blonde’s nose, the curve of the younger boy’s mouth; echoes of the man in both of them, the ripples of genetics spread across a generation. His children were beautiful, just like he was.

 _Stop it,_ he told himself. _Act your age, for Christ sakes._

He looked up, and there was a slight frown around the man’s eyes as he offered his usual half-smile, as if he had noticed something off about Bilbo’s approach. Perhaps it had taken him a little too long to come over, and he was a little impatient in the company of the boys. Perhaps he was just imagining it.

“The usual?” Bilbo asked, and the man nodded.

“And what would you two lads like?” he asked, his smile perhaps becoming a little more genuine. It was hard not to feel some immediate affection for boys as bright and cheerful as these two; already the blonde had folded a paper napkin into a swan, a talent that Bilbo himself would have liked to have a child.

The two boys looked at each other, and then back at Bilbo.

“Umm…” said the younger _– Kili, his mind supplied, that’s what his father had called him_ – his brown eyes wide (must be from his mother, Bilbo thought absently; the man’s eyes were that strange and striking shade of blue that the blonde boy shared) and then hid his face in his hands.

The man sighed fondly, and ruffled his hair, but it was the blonde boy that answered, though he was not more than two or three years older than Kili; he certainly couldn’t have been more than eight years old.

“Hot chocolate?” he asked.

“Of course,” Bilbo replied. “Would your brother like that as well?”

The blonde boy nodded. “Yes,” he said, and at a cough from his father he flushed a little. “Please,” he added quickly.

The younger boy peeked out from behind the barrier of his arms, and Bilbo stuck his tongue out quickly at him, chuckling when the boy hid again. 

“Anything else? Cake, sandwiches, a scone?”

The boy turned to the man, eyes wide and questioning.

“Can we, Uncle?”

Bilbo blinked, his mouth opening slightly, before immediately trying to school his face into something close to indifference. Not his sons, his nephews. Well. He stamped down the immediate surge of relief that washed through him - after all, it really wasn’t any of his business, and he didn’t have any right to feel anything about this revalation. Their Uncle nodded, one hand still in his younger nephew’s hair.

“Don’t tell your Mum.”

The blonde boy grinned, the beaming smile of a child being offered something that his parents wouldn’t approve of: one of the greatest joys of a child’s life.

“What kind of cakes do you have?”

His voice was tempered with well-learnt politeness, but it was impossible to ignore the excitement in his tone. Bilbo did laugh then, charmed.

“We have chocolate, coffee, carrot and strawberry today,” he replied, “which would the two of you like?”

“Kee’ll have chocolate,” the boy told him seriously, as if trying to impress the importance of cake onto Bilbo, “and can I have the strawberry, please?”

He smiled.

“Of course,” he answered. “The strawberry one is your Uncle’s favourite.”

The blonde boy frowned up at him as Bilbo stuck the pen back behind his ear.

“Uncle doesn’t like cake,” he told Bilbo. “He doesn’t like _any_ sweet things.”

Bilbo’s mouth definitely did open then, and the man stared back at him, looking equally caught in the headlights by his nephew’s comment. There was a long moment of silence as the pair simply looked at each other, the boys glancing in confusion between the two, until Bilbo broke away with a nod and a short, insincere little smile, spinning on his foot to return to the counter. There was a brief scrape of chair legs against the floor, as if someone had thought to stand and then changed their mind at the last moment, but he tried not to dwell on it.

Prim looked at him curiously, but he schooled his face into indifference as he quickly served up the cake, hesitating only a moment at the second slice of the strawberry one.

Was it even worth giving to him?

“ _He doesn’t like cake_ ,” he hissed at his friend, who gaped at him.

“What?”

“That’s why he never eats it: _he doesn’t bloody well like it_.”

He cut off any response by striding back to the table, tray in hand, depositing the cups and plates with a smile for the boys before backing off quickly, taking his apron off as he came behind the counter again.

“I need some air,” he told her, “it’s quiet, do you mind if I step outside for a bit?”

She looked at him closely, a small frown on her face as if she were trying to work something out, before it smoothed itself away and she shrugged.

“Of course not,” she answered. “Take all the time you need.”

He did, because Prim wouldn’t have said it if she hadn’t meant it; by the time he came back, the man and his nephews had gone.

The next day was Thursday, when he didn’t work, and he spent the day trying to work out exactly why the whole situation had bothered him as much as it did. When an answer failed to come to him, he baked a seedcake and ate the whole thing, scowling out the window as he did so.

The man didn’t come in on Friday, nor over the weekend, though that itself was not so rare; half past five o’clock came without the man on Monday, and his usual promptness made Bilbo assume that he wouldn’t come at all. Perhaps his game – whatever it had been – being found out had embarrassed him enough to chase him away for good. Bilbo felt almost listless as he served a customer, strangely melancholy for something that had never been being lost.

The bell above the door rang at five minutes to six.

Prim nudged him, and he looked up from the coffee he was pouring.

A chair scraped back, and a familiar figure sat at his usual table.

 “Why?”

Bilbo didn’t entirely remembering getting to the table, and he certainly hadn’t meant to put his hands flat on its surface, accusingly. The man stared back at him, giving one slow blink, clearly (and understandably) taken aback by the rather unanticipated and aggressive question. He leant back in his chair for a moment, as if trying to retreat away from the irate waiter in front of him.

Bilbo scowled when no immediate response was forthcoming.

“I don’t need to ask what you’re going to order because I already know; you want a coffee and a slice of strawberry cake, but do you know that it is _me_ who makes that cake? I come in here every day at seven in the morning and bake those cakes and I whisk the cream and I slice the fruit and people _love them_ , they sell out every day because I’m good at what I do and I’m _proud_ of what I do, and I want to know why it isn’t _good enough_ for you; why do you order it every day so that I have to throw it away? Why?”

The man stared at him.

Bilbo stared back.

A hot flush grew across his cheekbones as he stood there, becoming more and more aware of the silence that had swept across the room, of the heat of the eyes of everyone in there at his back as they turned to him: they hadn’t been listening in, rather, Bilbo had spoken so loudly – almost yelling – that everyone had heard whether they wanted to or not.

“Oh, god,” the man managed to reply, his voice deep and beautiful and Bilbo was _definitely_ blushing now, furiously so, and mortification was seeping through his annoyance as he suddenly reeled with the understanding of what he had done _and my god what was he doing_.

“God,” the man repeated, and to Bilbo’s horror there was the faintest of flushes across the base of the man’s throat, embarrassment having hit him too, “I just… really don’t _like_ cake.”

No one was even pretending not to listen now: everyone had turned in their chairs towards the both of them, eyes wide. Though Bilbo couldn’t see her, Prim was gaping, the cup she had been about to place on a trace still in her hand.

“Why do you order it then?” Bilbo asked, voice coming out a little more choked than he had intended.

“I…” the man trailed off, his hands tightening into fists and relaxing again rhythmically, “I just want an excuse to see you every day, to be honest.”

Bilbo stared at him.

Someone dropped a fork, and it clattered loudly in the silence.

He opened his mouth, but nothing at all came out.

Someone coughed.

The man stared right back.

Then his eyes dropped to the table, and conversation started up again, too loud as people tried to overcompensate for the quiet, pretending that they had not heard the whole thing. Bilbo righted himself, carefully removing his hands from the table, unable to look the man in the eye.

The man cleared his throat, glancing quickly up at him before back down at his fists again.

“My name is Thorin, by the way.”

Bilbo was pretty sure that that was the time he should have introduced himself, but unfortunately his mind was still short circuiting, and he wasn’t entirely sure if he could actually remember it through his discomfort.

“So you make the cake?”

Bilbo took a step backwards, mouth opening and closing.

“Ah… yes.”

 _Words, yes,_ he thought. _Well done Bilbo, use your words._

The man – Thorin – nodded.

Bilbo tried to say something, but his words were not quite functioning, catching in his throat. He was a little afraid that he might actually choke on them, or else he might forget to breathe.

“Could I have the usual?”

He nodded, and somehow managed to reply.

“Yes… ah, yeah, sorry for that.”

Thorin nodded, his mouth pulling into something that might have been a smile, but probably wasn’t.

“It’s okay.”

It wasn’t. Bilbo retreated behind the counter, unconvinced that his face wasn’t going to burst into flames. He managed to avoid looking at any of their customers, but Prim managed to catch his eye, puffing out her cheeks and widening her eyes in an exaggerated expression of astonishment. He poured the coffee in something of a daze, and placed the slice of cake on the plate.

“Will you take it?” he hissed at Prim, and after looking at him for a moment she nodded, taking the tray from him as he finished.

More than anything else, Bilbo wanted to run and hide, but unfortunately he didn’t think he could get away with ducking out of two shifts in one week, so he turned his attention to the coffee maker instead, which quite conveniently meant that his back was turned to the rest of the room and no one could see the bright flush on his cheeks. His mind switched off entirely as he rhythmically went through every filter and section, rinsing and cleaning, replacing the filters and then polishing the chrome casing to a shine after he was done in an attempt to prolong the inevitable.

By the time he turned around the table was empty, and the man was gone.

There was something different this time though.

Bilbo stared down at the table, and the coffee cup, and the jug of creamer, but he wasn’t really looking at any of those things.

It was the plate.

It was empty.

It was only when Prim spoke that he even realised that she had come up beside him.

“At least we know why he never came in on Thursdays now,” she commented, carefully watching his reaction.

Bilbo didn’t say anything.

He wasn’t entirely sure what he could have said.

The shift finished, thankfully without any more dramatic interludes, and the next week came and went without anything to interrupt the normal, day-to-day affairs of the place. Bilbo made cakes, served coffee and sandwiches, and slowly began to regret not having said anything at all the last time Thorin had been there, because since that afternoon, he had not reappeared.

Bilbo couldn’t really blame him; if there was going to be one thing that turned you off from a coffee place, it really would be being humiliated in front of a room full of its staff and patrons.

His temper grew steadily worse as another few days passed without a visit from Thorin, and it was almost two weeks until he saw him again. It was strange how he had ended up missing someone who he had barely exchanged more than a handful of words with, but he had grown so used to his daily presence that he felt it keenly every time the bell failed to ring at half past five.

“You like him,” Prim commented, not asking as she had already deduced the truth.

Bilbo continued to wipe down the counter, and didn’t look up.

“Liked who?” he asked, his tone neutral.

“The cake guy,” she said, and though Bilbo couldn’t see her he just _knew_ that she’d rolled her eyes.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Prim laughed. “Sure thing.”

“Seriously,” said Bilbo, turning to her with a frown. “Just drop it.”

Prim shrugged. “Alright, alright, if you really want me to.”

Bilbo turned back to the counter, wiping up a few crumbs. Prim shuffled her feet a little.

“Though I suppose if you’re really not bothered then you wouldn’t be interested in the fact that he just walked past.”

Bilbo span on his feet so quickly he was little worried he might have given himself whiplash.

“What?”

Prim grinned, and jerked a thumb at the door.

“Go, you idiot. He went left.”

Bilbo pulled his apron off as he darted to the door, abandoning carelessly on a chair. The door chimed above his head and he looked down the road, to the left, a tall figure just a little way away.

“Hey!” he called, and the man turned.

He tried very hard not to run as Thorin stilled, staring at him in something that was almost bemusement, and was almost fear, but still was not quite both.

“Hey,” he repeated as they drew level. “Umm… you’ve not been in in a while.”

Thorin cleared his throat, glancing awkwardly around them.

“Ah, no.”

Bilbo nodded.

“It’s… well, I mean, I’m sure your busy.”

Thorin made a non-committal noise, and Bilbo suddenly began to feel a little awkward.

“I’m Bilbo,” he said, remembering that he had never actually introduced himself.

“I know,” the man answered, immediately sighing at his own response. He ran a hand through his hair and muttered a curse. “I mean, I saw your name badge. Not that I’m a-” he cut himself off, staring up at the sky in frustration. “I mean, hello.”

Well. That was surprisingly sweet.

“I was wondering,” Bilbo asked after a pause, “why you didn’t just order coffee, and not the cake.”

Thorin stared at him wordlessly for a moment, his stare almost evaluative after the initial shock wore off, as if he were trying to work out whether he was being mocked or not. When he did reply he looked almost pained.

“The first time I went in I said yes to the cake, and then the next time you asked if I wanted the same, and I said yes again without thinking. It sort of… escalated from there.”

Bilbo stared at him.

“You mean you wasted a slice of cake every day because you couldn’t say ‘no, just the coffee today, thanks?’”

Thorin didn’t say anything, and Bilbo shifted a little.

His embarrassment was lifting now in light of Thorin himself; there was something oddly comforting in the knowledge that he wasn’t the only one who had felt awkward. He realised now he had a moment to properly drink in Thorin’s features that it was a relief to see him again.

“So… why did you say yes the first time?”

The flush that crept once more up Thorin’s neck at the question was a surprisingly glorious thing to behold, and Bilbo had to quickly stomp down the train of thought that lead to wondering just how that blush spread across the base of his throat and chest. Thorin looked suddenly awkward.

“I…” he trailed off, and Bilbo raised his eyebrows questioningly, not quite willing to let it go.

There was a long, tense moment, and then Thorin made a quiet, exasperated noise that might have been a noise.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Understandable,” said Bilbo, his tone entirely serious though a smile was playing about his mouth. “It is a little ridiculous.”

Thorin looked momentarily affronted, before his shoulders sagged a little, and his mouth twisted in acquiescence.

“… Perhaps,” he said in the end.

“Is that really why you kept coming in, though?” he asked, and Thorin looked up at the grey sky again, gritting his teeth.

“Yes,” he muttered.

And Bilbo smiled, properly this time.

“Well…” he replied, “that’s good.”

Thorin glanced down at him, startled.

“Good?”

Bilbo nodded. “Good. Would it be alright if I kissed you now? Only I’ve been thinking about doing it for months, and I’d rather not wait any longer now I know that it wasn’t a personal vendetta against my cakes.”

He almost wished that he had had a camera to snap a shot of Thorin’s expression, though he doubted he would have been quick enough to catch the shock that quickly morphed into suspicion again, clearly once more wondering if he was in some way being mocked.

Bilbo rolled his eyes, took hold of Thorin’s jacket, and pulled him down.


End file.
